Peter Hamby: “Phillips talks about Biden’s age with an air of conspiracy. He flatly called the president too old to serve, while also pausing a few times to say, ‘I want to be respectful.’ Phillips said ‘there’s a culture of silence’ among Democrats in Washington about Biden’s age. Many of his House colleagues, Phillips claimed, secretly want Biden to step aside, or hope that other Democrats step forward and run. But no elected official or Democratic strategist wants to say that publicly, he said, at the risk of running afoul of a sitting president.”
“I asked Phillips when these supposed concerns began. He told me a story about watching Biden speak to House Democrats behind closed doors, in 2021, as the White House was selling the Build Back Better plan to skeptical progressives in Congress. ‘The President appeared twice in front of the caucus to sell the BBB,’ Phillips told me. ‘Those presentations were … jarring.’ He paused, and I asked him what he meant. He paused again. ‘I want to leave it at that. Everybody who was in that room with me knows exactly what I am saying.’ (I asked two Democrats who were in the room for those meetings what, exactly, Phillips was talking about, and they disputed his account).”
